


The First Night

by binz



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher, Sparrow Hill Road - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/binz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All roads start somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allfireburns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allfireburns/gifts).



> So quick and tiny; just a taste, but something that I was hoping to get to the minute I saw the request. Let me tell you how ridiculous it was keeping this under 1000 words! Takes place after _Aftermath_. Presumes a happy ending for _Ghost Story_.

I idled my bike to a stop outside The Whistle Stop, and checked the directions I'd scribbled down on a takeout menu. This was it. I gave the place a look over: it was a little diner, a truck stop out here on the limits of the city's reach; nothing fancy, nothing that made it stand out. The front was mostly windows; the paint on the door was peeling. The parking lot was pretty empty, there was just two sedans, one banged up pick-up truck, and one compact that had to be at least twenty years old. There were a handfull of semis in the lot behind the diner; two, maybe three.

Something about the diner itself was... odd, though, and odder still the longer I looked at it. The edges almost seemed to blur, to be fading into the night sky. I squinted at it, rubbed my eyes, but it was almost like I was peering through the bottom of an old milk bottle, or like the building was covered in a layer of dust. My back started to crawl, and I checked my side arm in its holster across my back, the weight of the smaller gun at my ankle under my jeans, the knife down my other boot. I pulled my little cross out from under my shirt, and let it rest over my bomber jacket.

I don't like coming this far out of the city limits, out of my old jurisdiction. A plane roared by up above, its engine loud in the heavy summer night, the airport only a few miles away. But truck stops don't pop up too often in Chicago, and Mortimer Lindquist had said he wanted to meet in one. I didn't even know the man-- he had contacted me, just long enough ago for me to get in touch with Harry to vet him, and then get myself out here.

The diner door had a bell over it, a big heavy cowbell, and it clanged when I pushed in. All eyes turned to me: the waitress behind the counter, the short order cook I could just see through the order window behind her, the two truckers on the double-wide bar stools, and the rest of late night patrons. Including the ones I was looking for.

Lindquist had a booth near the back, next to a window. His glasses reflected the overhead lights, and were reflected again in the window-- it still looked dim, somehow, despite the bulbs I could see clearly glowing, and I squinted again to try and bring everything into focus. There was a girl sitting beside him. Young, pretty in a gangly, half-grown way, wearing a plaid shirt under a denim jacket with the jacket sleeves rolled up and the bottom of the shirt pulled through the cleavage like it was the 90s again. She couldn't be more than eighteen. Probably more like sixteen-- but the way she carried herself made me put a question mark over my guess. Wouldn't be the first time I'd met someone who didn't look their age. They both had mugs in front of them, and almost empty plates bearing the scatterings of finished burgers: a few french fries, ketchup smears, bits of lettuce and onion. They'd been here longer than they'd been waiting for me.

I walked over, and couldn't shake the feeling that for every shadow I brushed, there were another ten I couldn't see, and they clung like cobwebs. I rubbed at my arms, but all I felt was the leather of my jacket. The girl raised her eyes, met my gaze without expression. She was too far away still for me to tell their color, but they were weary, and sharp. But there was no tug of the ground beneath me, no sudden trip into a kaleidescope, no Alice in Wonderland allegorical acid trip, no forced exposure of someone else's secrets and safer places-- or my own. If she was anything other than a girl wearing the wrong kind of makeup, she wasn't a wizard. ...I was relieved.

If nothing else, riding down those jurisdiction lines makes interdepartmental cooperation seem downright neighborly. Neighbors bickering over who was responsible for the leaves from a tree growing on both properties, but neighbors nonetheless.

Lindquist started to stand, stopped halfway through and hovered in an awkward squat before sinking back down, the vinyl seat creaking. "Ms. Murphy," he said, and rubbed his hands together nervously. "Thank you for coming." He cleared his throat, a rough, breathy sound.

"Lindquist," I said, not hiding the fact that I was taking stock of him. Skinny, anxious, an intriguing bit of determination hiding in his jerky hand movements. I sat down across from him, and his shoulders lost a bit of their tension. "Who's your friend?"

"Ah," he said, and cleared his throat again with a little cough. "Yes. Right to the point. This is an... acquaintance of mine. She has a story someone needs to hear-- from what my contacts tell me, I think you're the right person. ...It's dangerous. But I've heard about what you've gone up against."

Harry had said Lindquist talked to ghosts. Something told me that nothing beats out the dead for gossip.

"All right," I said, and met the waitress's eyes across the floor, pointed at Lindquist's coffee mug. This night didn't look like it was anywhere near over. "Let me get ready."

The girl shifted, looked harder at my face, her forehead creasing, a line digging deep between her eyes. She had something to think about, it seemed. There was something off about her, and I looked back just as hard. I've seen a lot, these past fifteen years. She was something different. I caught a whiff of something like an old lady's perfume-- and lost it when my coffee was brought over.

Lindquist waited until the waitress was gone, then nodded, his expression tight and serious. "Please, will you hear her out? Her name is Rose-- Rose Marshall."


End file.
